The Pixar masterpiece gets a sequel. Riley, the runaway girl from the first film, is a teenager now. And that means a whole new set of emotions to deal with. Inside Riley’s head, Joy (Amy Poehler) is still trying to keep it together, as Riley enters the psychic chaos of high school. Now she’s joined by Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Ennui (Adele Exarchopousos), and Embarassment (Paul Walter Hauser). Longtime Pixar creative exec Kelsey Mann takes over the helm from Pete Docter, who made the original an enduring classic.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
The Memphis Flyer’s own Kailynn Johnson says “Longtime fans will be reminded as to why this pair works so well together in the buddy-cop genre. Thousands of slap-happy think pieces and unsolicited marriage tidbits later, Smith is still refreshing, and we’re reminded of why the camera loves him. Lawrence’s comedic legacy precedes him, and his impeccable delivery doesn’t disappoint.” Given the $125 million the film has stacked up in a week, viewers agree.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
George Miller’s story of how the hero of Fury Road became an Imperator in the army of Immortan Joe is the most epic thing you will see this year. Anya Taylor Joy and Alyla Browne portray Furiosa in this 15-year saga of loss and redemption in post-apocalyptic Australia. The sci fi action is a feast for the eyes, but Miller never fails to engage the mind while rocking the body. Read my review.
Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s high fantasy novels dominated the turn-of-the-century box office, and stimulated the imagination of a generation. Now the three films are back in theaters for a limited engagement in 4K and the full director’s cuts.
Hollywood is not exactly a place where justice flourishes. But aside from all of the sexual assault, and the way some white guys keep failing upward, one of the biggest injustices in Hollywood is the fact that there is no Academy Awards category for stunt work.
I don’t know if you’ve looked at a movie lately, but stunt performers are getting more screen time than ever. Many great pioneers of cinema built their reputations on hair-raising stunts: Think Charlie Chaplin roller-skating backwards on the edge of an abyss in Modern Times, or Buster Keaton riding on a locomotive cow catcher, batting railroad ties off the tracks in The General. Jackie Chan, the king of the Hong Kong stunt performers, has broken so many bones his injuries were shown as outtakes in his film’s credit sequences. Chan’s pain became part of his star attraction.
It’s not like stunt work is not artistic. Look at the greatest film of the 21st century, Mad Max: Fury Road, and tell me the pole cat attack, where the performers are swinging on 20-foot poles mounted on vehicles traveling 80 miles per hour, is not artistic. Even if you do define “art” more narrowly, there’s still the existence of technical categories like Best Sound Design and Best Visual Effects. Stunt work is every bit as necessary for the success of the film as the talented professionals in those categories.
And look, if you want to jazz up the rating of the Academy Awards (and who doesn’t want jazzier ratings?), adding categories where Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious could win something is just the ticket.
One person who definitely agrees with me on this, the most pressing issue of our time, is director David Leitch. He’s a former stunt performer himself, having been at one time Brad Pitt’s stunt double of choice, before directing the star in Bullet Train. He’s also the co-creator of the John Wick franchise, which has taken fight choreography into the realm of modern dance. The Fall Guy is his love letter to the world of stunt performers. It’s the rare action movie that really feels like it’s made with love.
It’s also relentlessly inside baseball because there’s nothing film people like more than films about themselves, or “self-reflexivity” in film theory-speak. The Fall Guy is ostensibly based on a TV series from the 1980s starring a post-Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors as a stunt man who solves crimes. (In the 1980s, it was a requirement that every TV star had to solve crimes. But I digress.) In a weird way, The Fall Guy owes a great deal to Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night, the 1971 romantic comedy about a film set that’s always on the verge of falling to pieces but never quite does.
Leitch’s star is Ryan Gosling, and to say he’s perfect for the role of Colt Seavers is a profound understatement. The source material is a notoriously rich vein of Reagan ’80s masculinity, with Majors driving a truck and singing country music between bringing in bounties. Gosling brings some much needed Kenergy to the role. This Colt Seavers cries to Taylor Swift songs. There’s not too many actors who could convincingly make a phone confession of their love to their girlfriend, director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), while also fleeing from assassins in a stolen speedboat.
Jody and Colt met years ago when she was a camera op and he was the preferred stunt double for megastar Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). While filming Tom’s latest sci-fi blockbuster, their relationship evolves from a semi-recurring, on-set fling (which is a fairly common thing in the film world) to something more serious. Then, producer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) insists Colt do another take of a dangerous high fall. Colt’s luck runs out, and he wakes up on a stretcher with a broken back.
Eighteen months later, Colt is hiding out in Los Angeles, working as a valet at a Mexican restaurant, when Gail catches up with him. Jody is directing her first big feature film, a passion project she and Gail have worked for years to put together. They need Colt for a big stunt, a dangerous cannon roll on a beach. Jody has personally asked for him, Gail says, to support her as she tries to make good on her first big break. More inside baseball: Jody’s “passion project” is apparently a remake of the 1983 movie Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, a 3D debacle so notoriously awful it is nowadays only watched by sick cinematic masochists such as myself.
Colt arrives on set in Sydney and pulls off the spectacular stunt, which in real life broke the Guinness World Record for most on-screen rolls by a car — a fact the film-within-a-film’s stunt coordinator Dan (Winston Duke) points out. But Jody’s not happy to see Colt. She was crushed when he cut off contact after the accident, and tells him via bullhorn as she repeatedly sets him on fire. “That was perfect! Let’s do it again!”
When Colt confronts Gail, she reveals the real reason he’s been brought on board. Tom Ryder has gone missing, and since he and Colt used to be tight, Gail thinks he would be the best at discreetly tracking down the wayward movie star before Jody and Universal Pictures find out he’s gone AWOL.
Gosling and Blunt are breezy and charming, and the supporting cast all understand the assignment. The whole point of the now-forgotten TV series was to cut to the chase, forget about all those pesky story beats, and get to the good stunts. The Fall Guy is at its best when it’s putting its small army of crack stunt performers through their paces with the safety wires and crash bags fully visible for once. It only makes the stunts more harrowing by emphasizing the human frailty of the performers.
“I have a rose on my thumb because I just love love,” he says. “I love the idea of love. I just struggle with it a lot.”
He has a sailboat tattoo on his wrist. That’s a reminder to “remember to just go with the flow. Life will take you this way and that way.”
Since Brooks, 30, began making movies as a child, life has taken him to the Sundance Film Festival as winner of the Sundance Ignite award. He won the $10,000 Memphis Film Prize twice for his movies in 2018 and 2019. And he’s earned several awards for his short films and music videos at the Indie Memphis Film Festival.
His recent movie, “What Were You Meant For?,” which deals with Black male identity, is included in the current Crosstown Arts film exhibition.
Filmmaker Craig Brewer is a Brooks fan. “I remember seeing this short he had made and thinking, ‘I’ve never seen Memphis kids skateboarding look so epic and beautiful,’” Brewer says. “It was cinema. It wasn’t just skateboarding. Ever since then Kevin has been growing as a storyteller, as a director.”
It all began with Power Rangers when Brooks was 5 years old. “I used to have toy Power Rangers as a little kid,” Brooks says. “And I used to mimic their voices and make them do certain things.” He reenacted scenes from the Power Rangers shows. “I guess that was my way of storytelling and making movies.”
When he was 6, Brooks began using a VHS camcorder his dad bought. “I remember him taking it around the house saying, ‘Press this button,’ which was the red button. ‘And you go and record things. Then if you hit the rewind button, you can watch it back.’ I thought that was the most amazing thing ever. He taught me stop-motion animation.”
Brooks began filming his Power Rangers with his dad’s camera. “I’d just pan back and forth, left and right. After I did that first recording, I would go around recording the dog and just anything.”
That same year, his parents took him to see The Matrix. “That movie was more visually appealing than any movie I had ever seen. It just blew me away. For one, I visually remember the infamous Keanu Reeves-dodging-the-bullet scene. And I remember trying to recreate that. Just myself. Just in my room. Trying to bend backwards. Keep falling over and over again.”
After viewing the movie 20 times on a VHS tape, Brooks discovered the movie included a special feature at the end of the credits that showed how the moviemakers created that bullet effect. “I knew movies weren’t real, but seeing what went into it and seeing the directors telling people it would be this and that, I think that is what got me. Just, ‘This is a world I have got to be in.’”
Skating to Sundance
By the time he was 7, Brooks was making short 30-second films. He didn’t think he wanted to make a living as a filmmaker, but, he says, “I knew I wanted to be in the realm of making movies. At the same time, I was playing basketball really heavy.”
Basketball overshadowed moviemaking for a while. But Brooks continued to get blown away by cinema. He loved films by Quentin Tarantino, Terrence Malick, and Steven Spielberg.
Basketball, eventually, took a backseat to filmmaking. “That’s when things started to change. Before that, I was really wanting to go down the path of being a basketball player. Trying hard. My love just wasn’t there for it anymore. Before the games, I dreaded playing. It was a weird feeling.”
Plan B was moviemaking. “It was always around.”
To make a little cash on the side, Brooks made music videos for local artists. Making videos as well as short films in high school helped him as a filmmaker. “It taught me how to record on the fly. How to grab what I need for the edit and think of the edit while I’m recording — that taught me a lot. At the same time, I knew I wanted to tell my own stories and gear more toward narrative and documentary filmmaking.”
Brooks, who majored in film and production at University of Memphis, made a short film, “Keep Pushing,” during his senior year. “That was my first thing I was super proud of.”
His idea was to cast real skateboarders to showcase their expertise. He then met skateboarder Husain Razvi, who told him, “Man, what if you just follow me around?”
“I was like, ‘Follow you around?’ Husain can skate, but he’s not doing tricks. What he’s doing is just kicking the board, going down the ramps, but nothing exciting like I was going to have these guys doing.”
Then, Brooks says, “A light bulb clicked. And I was like, ‘I was trying to tell the story of all these people who are great skaters.’”
Instead, he shot Razvi. “I filmed him every single part of his day.”
The 10-minute film turned into a documentary. “It was great footage. Him interacting with kids. Him talking about life.”
Brooks was looking at his phone one day in geology class when something caught his attention. “I see that Sundance has this program for 18- to 24-year-olds for short films. It has to be 10 minutes long. You have to turn it in within the next two weeks.”
Brooks went to work on his film about Razvi. “For the next two weeks, all I did was edit. I stayed up every night editing it. I put my own music to it.”
Four weeks later, Brooks received an email that read, “You have been selected as one of the top five filmmakers to be part of the Sundance Ignite program. We will fly you out. We will take care of everything.”
Brooks was stunned. “I literally almost started crying.”
He attended the festival in Park City, Utah. People praised the film. “They were saying that it just felt like you were really there in that world. And the camera movement really made you analyze things differently. They were saying they fell in love with Husain as a character because he felt so real.
“They were saying after the film they had this different outlook on what it means to be successful, what it means to go through life, and how it’s not right to always be in competition with one another.
“The film is about Husain. He’s not great at skateboarding, but he loves doing it every single day. No matter what, you’re not going to stop him. I don’t care if you’re the best skateboarder. He’s not going to compare himself to you. That’s just his nature. He’s like, ‘I’m in my own world and I’m going to take my place and I’m going to do what I do and I’m in love with what I’m doing.’ I think that’s remarkable. That story worked out because of Husain being the most honest human being.”
Brooks continued to make movies after Sundance. “Marcus,” which made it in the top 10 for the Memphis Film Prize, is “a short film that examines the retaliatory state of gang violence.”
“Myron,” which stars Lawrence Matthews, is about “a young Black man who embarks on a day full of skateboarding with his friends who are predominantly white.” He returns home “with a different outlook on life, and how he’s truly seen in society.”
“Grace,” which stars Rosalind Ross, is about a prostitute who always dreamed about singing on the big stage. “She gets her chance when she comes across a flier for a karaoke contest,” Brooks says.
His next film, “Bonfire,” is a “meditative piece on the nature of love and heartbreak. I was inspired by a big breakup that took place. I wanted to get my emotions out, and the best way for me to do that was through film.”
“So, I got my friends together and gave them cameras. And we would go out on the weekend and film scenes with different people and ask them, ‘What is love to you?’ It was very cathartic, and the making of it was experimental. It was highly influenced by Terrence Malick films.”
The movie premiered at the Indie Memphis Film Festival, where it won the Hometowner Documentary Short award in 2018.
His narrative film, “Last Day,” is “about a guy’s last day with his family before he’s sent off to prison.” He won his first $10,000 Memphis Film Prize with that film.
Brooks won his second Memphis Film Prize for his movie, “A Night Out.” “After a bad breakup a woman goes out with her friends for a girls’ night out. But the night doesn’t end the way she expects.”
Indie Memphis awarded Brooks and his co-director Abby Meyers $10,000 for their film “A Night Out.” (Photo: Courtesy Kevin Brooks)
He collaborated on “Night Out” with his friend Abby Meyers, who co-directed the film. “That came from hearing so many stories of women being sexually assaulted,” he says.
Brooks continued to make music videos, including one for Talibah Safiya’s “Healing Creek,” which won the Best Hometowner Music Video award in the Video Memphis competition.
In 2020 Brooks was included among the Memphis Flyer’s 20<30 honorees. He then went to work for Kellogg’s, shooting five episodes around the United States for a mini series, Black Girls Run. The series, which was about “promoting health in the Black community,” featured young women training for their first 5K.
Brooks also did a project for McDonald’s, where he traveled to Los Angeles and “highlighted kids in different sectors who were doing amazing things in the Black community,” he says.
One young man was into finance and a young woman was into fashion. But they were all “game changers.”
“I love connecting with people through stories, and opportunities just come about,” Brooks says. “If it’s a story or an opportunity for me to use my voice in that capacity, I’m 100 percent in.”
In 2022, Brooks went to work in his present job as a videographer for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He interviews and films patients telling their stories.
Brooks won the Hometowner Documentary Short for “Bonfire.” (Photo: Courtesy Kevin Brooks)
Enjoy the Journey
In 2023, Brooks got serious about working on his own feature film. “I wanted to do a feature for so long and put so much pressure on it. When I felt every door was closing, I felt jaded. I just wasn’t sure what my next move would be in terms of independent filmmaking.”
But, he says, “Through that period, I also found that inner kid who was in me again, who just wanted to go out and make movies for fun.”
Brooks returned to moviemaking when he made “Embers of Self,” which played opening night at Indie Memphis Film Festival’s Hometowner Shorts Showcase. “That really got me going, just because it was me being free and making things without a result,” Brooks says. “That’s how art should be. I had gotten away from that.”
Brooks felt he had been “focusing on the end result and not the process.”
That’s when he came up with his Crosstown Arts film. The movie is “just about masculinity and the ways that I have maneuvered in this world because of that label.”
He deals with the idea that Black men “always have to be super masculine,” and that it’s okay to be vulnerable.
Brooks currently is knee-deep into preproduction for a feature film. “I’m really 100 percent going headfirst into it. And I’m doing it my way.
“If it touches one person, that means a lot,” he adds.
Says Brewer: “The thing I’m most impressed with him is, he is hungry for knowledge and always looking for a way to improve himself and keep in the game of filmmaking. Some people burn out. Some people get discouraged. And there’s a lot in this craft that can turn you off to it. But he manages to push through and stay positive and stay creative.”
“He’s a rare one,” says filmmaker Tom Shadyac. “Full of passion, commitment, and talent. He doesn’t just make movies to tell stories. It’s not just a means to an end for him. It’s more holistic for Kevin. He cares about his subjects and subject matter. For him, the means are the end.”
Among the tattoos Brooks sports are ones that read, “Keep Pushing” and “Enjoy the Journey.”
“You’ve got to do those two things,” he says. “You just have to keep pushing. You have to enjoy the journey that you’re on and know that things are not going to happen fast. But if you just follow Husain’s route and just wake up every day and do what you love, then things will work out.”
Godzilla (left) and King Kong (right) do stuff in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. (Courtesy Legendary)
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Adam Wingard’s sequel to 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong ads a weird “x” to the title. The big lizard and the big ape team up to fight off a mysterious threat from beneath the Hollow Earth. Expect extremely large things smashing into other extremely large things. Also, King Kong’s got a robot arm.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
The second film with “Empire” in the title on screens this week features the old Ghostbusters cast, Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, and Ernie Hudson, teaming up with the new Ghostbusters cast, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace, to battle a supernatural force so scary it literally freezes everyone and everything.
Kung Fu Panda 4
Jack Black returns as Po the Dragon Warrior panda who is given a new assignment by his master, voiced by Dustin Hoffman: He is to oversee the Valley of Peace. Will the hot-headed warrior warm to his life change? Or will he open a can of panda kung fu whoop-ass on The Chameleon (Viola Davis)?
Immaculate
Sydney Sweeney stars as a Sister Cecilia, a nun headed to a new convent in Italy on the express invitation of Father Sal Tedeschi (Alvaro Morte), who is definitely not trying to clone Jesus and use Cecilia as a surrogate Virgin Mary, because that would be blasphemy, right?
Days of Heaven
On Thursday, April 4th, the Crosstown Arts Film Series presents Terrence Malick’s second film, 1978’s Days of Heaven. It stars a very young Richard Gere as Bill, who flees the Chicago police to Texas, where he competes for the love of Abby (Brooke Adams) with a stable, handsome farmer (Sam Shepard, also very young.) The 1978 Academy Award winner for Best Cinematography is one of the most gorgeously shot films ever made.
My Neighbor Totoro
If Malick ain’t your speed, April 4th is also Anime Night at Black Lodge. Hop on the Catbus for Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 cult classic.
Anwar Jamison and Nana Ama McBrown reprise their roles in Coming to Africa’s sequel.
Anwar Jamison set out to do something very few people have ever done: The Memphis-based filmmaker wanted to shoot a movie in Ghana. The second-largest country in West Africa is undergoing a period of economic expansion, and Jamison was fascinated with the young democracy’s success story. It was a long fight, but after enduring setbacks such as the lead actor bailing on the project right before he was supposed to get on the plane, Jamison finally completed Coming to Africa — just in time for the 2020 Covid pandemic to shut down movie theaters worldwide.
“The premiere was at the Las Vegas Black Film Festival, which I believe the first physical film festival that opened back up during that time,” says Jamison. “Then I had the chance to come back and do Indie Memphis. … I took it to Ghana, had a great response over there in the cinemas. But, again, it was somewhat slow because I guess we were kind of pioneers in that space. We were one of the first movies that came out as their cinemas reopened because they had been closed a lot longer than ours over here due to Covid.”
After an indie theatrical release in the U.S., Coming to Africa was released on Amazon Prime Video, where, Jamison says, “It was really, really well received! Then I moved it over to Tubi and [Roku streaming channel] kweliTV, who I really enjoy working with. DeShuna Spencer runs it right here out of Memphis.”
But if the original Coming to Africa was a struggle, things were easier for the sequel, Welcome to Ghana. In the first installment, Jamison took over the lead acting role out of necessity, playing Adrian, an ambitious American business executive who has his life changed on a visit to Ghana’s bustling capital, Accra. Much of that life-change is thanks to Akosua, a charming schoolteacher played by Nana Ama McBrown. “It was my first time in Ghana, literally,” he says. “In a way, that helped me play the character because I was in the same situation as the character. I literally was seeing these things for the first time. This time, I was able to have more of a game plan ahead of time and say, ‘This is how I want to do things.’”
As a result, Welcome to Ghana is considerably more ambitious. Akosua and Adrian are planning to get married, but her family doesn’t approve — and that’s just the first complication. Jamison wanted to make an ensemble comedy, and the success of the first film in Africa and the opportunity to work with McBrown, the biggest star in Ghana, helped open lots of doors. “It really turned into a who’s who of actresses and actors who are the cream of the crop over there. It is a true ensemble cast. They were looking around at each other on the set like, ‘Wow! We’ve never really been in a movie together!’ I was able, from the outside, to kind of pull people together. In Ghanian film, you’re going to have political ties. This actor works with their director only, or, this actor works with this production company. But me from the outside, I was able to just grab people who I was familiar with, who are some of my favorites in Ghana and Sierra Leone, and pull ’em all together.”
The film had its world premiere in Accra on the same day last summer as Barbie. “The biggest Hollywood movies are big in Ghana,” says Jamison. “So I was proud that we smashed Barbie that day! Barbie had a nice crowd. But for us, Coming to Africa: Welcome to Ghana, it was out of control!”
The film is now streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi. “The story is very universal, so it crosses geographical, cultural, racial, ethnic boundaries,” says Jamison. “You’re getting all of these cultural things, but once you sink into the story, you realize they do a lot of the same things we do. So you get to see differences in the culture, but you also get to see those similarities.”
Jamison says he’s finishing his doctoral dissertation on African cinema before he starts prepping the final film in the trilogy. “I want Memphis to know that this was made by a Memphis filmmaker, and I want them to know that we took a lot of pride in putting it together, and that we put Memphis on the map in Ghana!”
Coming to Africa: Welcome to Ghana is streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi.
Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart sizzle off the screen in their portrayal of a toxic relationship.
I’m a sucker for a good film noir, or even a mediocre film noir that pushes all the right buttons. Director Rose Glass’ new flick, Love Lies Bleeding, has got my number. Glass, whose first film for A24 was the psychological horror Saint Maud, has studied the classics, and it shows. But Love Lies Bleeding is a neo-noir that uses the form as a jumping-off point, rather than being shackled to the past.
When we first meet Lou (Kristen Stewart), she is shackled to her past. She’s working at a gym in small town Texas, somewhere near the Mexican border. Much of her job entails bailing out a toilet that is perpetually clogged by the pumped up patrons. Some of that foul bowel activity may be the side effects of the black market steroids she slings on the side. The year is 1989, so it’s not a great time for Lou to be an out lesbian in Texas. Then Jackie (Katy O’Brian) walks in.
Jackie is an aspiring bodybuilder from Oklahoma, who happens to be currently homeless. In one great early shot, she does pull-ups on a pipe under a bridge while trucks rumble by overhead. She gets a job at the local shooting range by showing the manager J.J. (Dave Franco) a good time in the parking lot of the club. Before she even has a place to stay, she uses the money to join Lou’s gym. Jackie’s ultimate goal is to compete in a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas, and from the looks of her extremely stacked body, she’s got a shot at a trophy.
Lou certainly notices Jackie’s assets, and after the two of them run off some alpha males who aren’t bright enough to realize they’re barking up the wrong tree, they fall into bed together. Glass has a lot of fun shooting the sex scenes, bathing these two unconventional beauties in blue light like an erotic thriller from the 1980s. Over a morning-after omelette, Jackie admits she doesn’t have a place to stay and asks if she can crash on the couch. Lou makes clear that’s not where she’ll be sleeping.
Another 1980s trash cinema trick Glass has down pat is the training montage set to pop music. I’m sure they would have loved to have had “Eye of the Tiger” play while pushing in on Jackie’s ripping muscles, but Clint Mansell’s pulsing electronic score gets the point across nicely. Jackie’s single-minded pursuit of physical perfection gets a boost when Lou introduces her to steroids. Unfortunately, this new chemical enhancement proves destabilizing to Jackie’s already fragile psyche. Glass uses flashes of psychedelia to draw us into her deteriorating mental state. The gun range where Jackie works just happens to be owned by Lou’s estranged father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) who, it turns out, is using the range as a front for his gunrunning operation, supplying weapons to Colombian drug cartels. There’s always an element of Greek tragedy in a good film noir, where the characters carry their doom in them, just adjacent to their strength. Lou Sr. teaching a woman in the throes of spiraling steroidal psychosis to use a gun certainly qualifies.
Lou’s cut the old man off, but she keeps in touch with her older sister Beth (Jena Malone), who is being brutally abused by her husband J.J., the amorous gun range manager. When J.J. puts Beth in the hospital, and Lou finds out about Jackie’s prior carnal knowledge of J.J., the pressure becomes too much, and Jackie lashes out. The repercussions of her violence spread through this small town in true noir fashion, with framing, counter-framing, bushwhacking, and betrayal around every corner.
Glass’ direction is confident and occasionally daring, and her two leads sizzle off the screen. The ending swerves hard toward the magical in a way I’m still not sure I’m on board with. Film noir is outwardly cynical, but the greats, like Out of the Past, always have a romantic core — even if the fire of love ultimately consumes the lovers. Compared to the corrupt world of Love Lies Bleeding, Lou and Jackie’s toxic relationship looks downright healthy.
Love Lies Bleeding is now playing at Malco Collierville, Paradiso, Stage, and Wolfchase cinemas.
A prisoner of Auschwitz
walks through Commandant Rudolph Höss’ garden in
The Zone of Interest. (Photo: Courtesy A24)
While I was watching The Zone of Interest, my mind kept going back to “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Ursula Le Guin’s Hugo Award-winning 1974 short story describes a utopian city where all of the civic functions seem to run pretty smoothly, and all of the citizens are cared for and happy. But this town has a secret. Once citizens are old enough, they are shown a prison cell where a child in chains is slowly being starved to death. The citizen is told Omelas’ happiness and prosperity depends on this child’s suffering.
Most people just shrug and move on with their otherwise fulfilling lives. There’s just one kid in the box, and so many who are doing great. It’s a fair trade-off, they think. But every now and then, someone who finds out about the child chained in the prison cell wanders into the wilderness and never comes back. Why anyone would do this is a mystery to those who stay behind.
In Jonathan Glazer’s new film, exactly one person walks away from a beautiful villa built next to a death camp. Because the moment comes so unexpectedly and is done so perfectly, I won’t spoil it in this review, except to say that the one who walks away is not Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), the owner of the home who, not coincidentally, is also the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
It’s 1943, and Rudolph is riding high. The Nazi project of conquering all of Europe to the Urals, exterminating the Jews and subjugating the Slavs so that the Aryans can have lebensraum (“living space”) to build beautiful farms where they raise beautiful, white families, is working. Rudolph and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) refer to themselves as “settlers.” As befitting an SS officer of his rank, the couple has a huge house with a sprawling garden and even a swimming pool with a slide. On one side, their property backs up to an idyllic country stream. The other side shares a wall with the Auschwitz death camp, whose foreboding stone buildings are just visible behind the razor wire. This is convenient for the commandant, who likes to work from home.
Rudolph Höss, not coincidentally, also starved random children to death. He did it as a method of collective punishment every time a prisoner escaped Auschwitz.
The real genius of The Zone of Interest is that Glazer never shows any of Rudolph’s work on screen, save for one moment when a line of prisoners is led into his fields by guards on horseback. But the signs of the atrocities happening just over the wall are inescapable. When the wind is right, ash from the crematoria floats over laundry drying on the clothesline. Hedwig gets periodic deliveries of fine clothes and household goods confiscated from prisoners as they were led to the gas chamber.
The family, which includes five children, carries on with an eerie normality, but the one thing they can’t filter out of their perfect little world is the noise. The Zone of Interest is up for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, where it faces stiff competition. The one award it deserves to win outright is Best Sound. Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn’s soundscapes faithfully recreate what it was like to live next to a murder factory. When Hedwig’s mother (Imogen Kogge) visits, their tour of the gardens is punctuated by screams and gunfire. One of the film’s most chilling moments comes when the couple’s toddler son overhears his father order the guards to drown a prisoner in the river where the family plays.
Glazer’s last film was the excellent 2014 sci-fi creeper Under the Skin, which starred Scarlett Johansson as an alien predator who develops empathy for her Earthling prey. Rudolph and Hedwig don’t act like monsters. Mostly, they just stick to their routine as busy executive and doting housewife, throwing kids’ birthday parties, tending the garden (or at least supervising the enslaved gardeners), and navigating office politics. Ninety percent of the time, Glazer stays in their perspective — this is a film about how monsters view themselves, after all. But even surrounded by all the creature comforts, the family can’t keep reality at bay forever. The question Glazer’s remarkable film raises in the viewer is, “What atrocities do our comfortable lives allow us to ignore?”
The Zone of Interest Now playing Malco Ridgeway Cinema Grill & Bar
While renovations for Tom Lee Park were underway, Carol Coletta, Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) CEO and president, knew that the project was worth remembering. It’s a story almost a century in the making, beginning with Tom Lee’s heroic act of saving 32 people from drowning in the Mississippi River in 1925. “Very few public assets or public parks are built with one person’s courage and display of generosity and humanity at its core,” she says.“We had this in mind every step of the way … the opportunity to bring that story to the forefront and put that at the center.” A film, it seemed, would best document MRPP’s efforts in continuing that story, so Coletta commissioned filmmaker Molly Wexler and her team at Last Bite Films to follow the four-year journey.
“We didn’t specify the story,” Coletta says. “We just said to Molly and her great crew to just document what’s going on here and talk to everyone, see what you see. And I think they really landed the story really neatly because in a lot of ways, they’re really telling a story about equity and at its heart that’s what the story of the making of this park is all about. We had this mantra of a riverfront for everyone. And not just for a few days a year, not just to be enjoyed by a few, but really a riverfront for everyone.”
Part of the beauty of a documentary, as opposed to, say, a book, is that individual voices come together, with each voice taking direct ownership of part of the story. It’s a story of many, not just one, Coletta says. “It just comes alive and I think it sticks in a way when you hear straight from people who’ve been involved, people who feel affected by it, seeing some of the images. It opens with a beautiful image of Tom Lee’s family and just to see them, just to hear from them, and how meaningful this was to them is a lovely part of the story. But it’s a piece of the equity story.”
The film, she continues, “has a real emotional center to it that is quite lovely, and so I think it will be a film that can be enjoyed by people who know nothing about Memphis and know nothing about this park. … I think of major projects that have been built in Memphis, and the histories teach us a lot about what it takes to build something ambitious. I’ve seen a lot of projects get built and I hope someone who’s going to build the next project can look at this film and say, ‘Let’s learn from this experience.’”
The 25-minute documentary, titled “A Riverfront for Everyone,” will premiere at the inaugural This Is Memphis event on Friday, February 16th, ahead of Tom Lee’s birthday on Sunday. For the premiere, MRPP will host a silent auction of fun, unique, Memphis-related experiences, and will serve generous bites and drinks throughout the evening. Cocktail attire is suggested. Purchase tickets here.
MRPP also plans to air and to screen “A Riverfront for Everyone” on WKNO and at film festivals at later dates.
I generally don’t get too bent out of shape about the Academy Awards. I guess my attitude comes from a lifetime of disappointment stemming from the fact that Oscar voters don’t like the same things I like. Academy Awards nominations and wins are best viewed as conversation starters, not any objective (whatever that means) measure of the best films of the year.
Having said that, Past Lives was ROBBED! Yes, I’m YELLING ABOUT IT!
Maybe it seems strange to be crying — no, YELLING foul about such a quiet film that has been lavished with accolades. Yes, it is nominated for Best Picture, and writer/director Celine Song was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Both of these nominations are well deserved. But Past Lives deserved more.
The film opens in millennial Seoul, South Korea. Na Young and Hae Sung (played as children by Seung Ah Moon and Seung Min Yim, respectively) are middle-school classmates. Just as they move from fast friends to puppy love, they are separated when Na Young’s family immigrates to Toronto, Canada.
Twelve years pass. Na Young has Westernized her name to Nora Moon, and is now played by Greta Lee. She has moved to New York City for her education and to pursue a career as a playwright. Hae Sung (now played by Teo Yoo) is finishing up his hitch in the South Korean military and trying to figure out what to do with his life. Hae Sung does some internet searches for Na Young, but since he’s unaware of her name change, they come up empty. He puts out an open call for help in reconnecting with his long lost not-quite-girlfriend via Facebook, and word gets back to now-Nora via the Korean diaspora. It seems she has never stopped thinking about him, either.
From opposite sides of the world, they reconnect on period-appropriate video conferencing app Skype. (Song may be the first director to induce nostalgia with Skype’s “boodle-oodle-oodle-oop” incoming call alert sound, but she probably won’t be the last.) It’s these conversations where Teo Yoo and Greta Lee shine. They’re subtle, quiet, and totally relatable. Nora and Hae Sung are hesitant at first. They’re happy to see each other, for sure, but also feeling each other out. Emotions are complicated on both sides. A lot can change in 12 years, especially when that time period is half a lifetime. They become each other’s comfort, something to run to after a hard day. But the distance between them seems unbridgeable. Eventually, Nora breaks it off, saying she wants to devote herself to her career by taking a slot at a prestigious writer’s retreat, while Hae Sung goes to China for language lessons. The first person Nora meets at the writer’s retreat is Arthur (John Magaro), a fellow writer, and they immediately hit it off.
Then, 12 more years pass. Now Nora and Arthur are married and living in New York City, both with reasonably successful careers, but no children. Out of the blue, Nora gets a message from Hae Sung. He’s going to be in New York on business and was wondering if they could finally get together and see each other in real life for the first time since Seoul. Nora accepts, but when they finally do lay eyes on each other, things become a lot more fraught and complex than either one of them ever imagined.
Lee, who has been low-key brilliant in Russian Doll and What We Do in the Shadows, absolutely deserved a Best Actress nomination for her work as Nora. She juggles conflicting motivations and feelings with remarkable subtlety — which is perhaps a strike against her with an Academy that tends to equate good acting with MORE acting.
The same with Teo Yoo. In lesser hands, Hae Sung would have been a whiny loser or a John Cusack-ian perfect (yet kinda toxic) boyfriend. Instead, he’s a successful, otherwise well-adjusted guy who is following a deep impulse he doesn’t fully understand. And while we’re at it, John Magaro could have easily come off with a Best Supporting Actor nomination as the long suffering Arthur.
Maybe if it had been released in 2024, Past Lives would have gone on to a big Oscar sweep. But 2023 was the best year for film in recent memory, so the competition is crowded with worthy nominees. Even the ones I would have swapped out for Past Lives (I’m looking at you, Maestro) are still well-made and enjoyable films. Just like the star-crossed lovers it portrays, there’s an alternate world where things worked out better for Past Lives.
Past Lives Now Streaming Hulu and Amazon Prime Video
Rickey Fondren III center with microphone (Photo: Claire James)
“If you want to master something, teach it,” the great physicist Richard P. Feynman is said to have remarked. “The more you teach, the better you learn.” That’s certainly borne out by the recent experiences of students who teamed up to create a new musical film and instructional package on African-American history for the Soulsville Foundation. Once it premieres online this Friday, February 2nd, it will be available as a free download for educators and students throughout Black History Month and into September. Producing such a film for the national event is a tradition the foundation began after Covid made live performances risky, and it’s continued ever since. And taking the project’s mission to heart caused this year’s student-producers to learn much along the way.
“What Stax wants to do is keep the history and message of soul music alive, but especially that of Stax Records, and the impact that the label had not only on the Memphis community, but the world at large,” says Anaya Murray, a high school senior and Stax Music Academy (SMA) student who served as the film’s co-writer and co-producer. “Black History Month is an opportunity to remind people of this important part of Black culture and American culture. In our film, Stax Meets Motown, we focus on two record labels who were rivals and competitors, and what they both contributed to music, but it’s about more than that.”
Anaya Murray (Photo: Ayanna Murray)
Indeed, the film and companion study guides delve into the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the Detroit Riots of 1967, the history of Black radio, the recording industry, and fashion. At the same time, the topic is also perfectly suited to a musical. “Think High School Musical and Grease,” Murray says of the film, which she masterminded with fellow high-schoolers Andrew Green and Rickey Fondren III. Green and Fondren attend SMA, as does most of the cast.
“There are moments where they’ll break out into song, where there’s dancing, and it’s all Stax and Motown music. And then, I’m one of the songwriting students at the Academy and we wrote an original song for the end credits. So we pay homage to Stax and Motown and then add something new. And all the sounds that you hear are Stax students singing and playing.”
That includes Murray herself, who also studies voice at SMA, and the story, set entirely in Booker T. Washington High School (which many Stax artists attended), is designed to both teach and give performance, recording, and songwriting students a chance to shine. As Murray explains the plot, “Lisa, the lead, moves from Detroit to Memphis, and it’s the simple story of her learning about Stax and the culture, but also of the Memphis kids learning from her about Detroit and Motown.”
Yet ultimately the film reveals the SMA’s support for more than music. As Murray says, “I’ve been a student at Stax Music Academy since my first year of high school, and once I started to show an interest in filmmaking over the past two years, Stax noticed that and gave me an opportunity to assist on the script for last year’s [Black History Month] film.” She also developed her own material, winning the 2023 Indie Memphis Youth Film Fest Jury Award for her film, Father’s Day.
Eventually she was tapped to write this year’s screenplay. “I’m really excited about the opportunity because screenwriting is something I love to do,” she says. “Then I was able to get Andrew Green, one of my film friends, on board. He’s also planning to go to college for screenwriting and directing. And Rickey is a singer at SMA, but acting is really where his passion lies. He’s actually co-starring in the film as the love interest, but he was really excited to go into screenwriting as well, so he helped a lot with doing research to make sure that we were really providing accurate information.”
Thus did the writers learn as they progressed, and gaining the Soulsville Foundation’s stamp of approval was proof positive that they got the facts right. Now the film and instructional materials are being readied for their premiere. As Murray explains, all involved are aware of how important this educational mission is: “When it goes live, they send that link out to students not only in the United States, but worldwide as well. It is a global event.”
